Old timey instrumentation and folk surroundings allow Graffin’s (as always) ingenious hooks to breathe in the open spaces and appropriate accompaniment.
Real Gone is a return to the territory Waits has rummaged through for the past 20 years or so, with a few surprises thrown in to make sure nobody gets bored.
Cave’s love of Cohen, Waits, and Cash is sublimated into an intoxicatingly passionate collection of songs that bears no connections to their forefathers.
How people continued to lump them with The Get Up Kids is beyond me. Wood/Water is a mature, thinking album, like Wilco writing acoustic songs for The Smiths.
Imagine a drunk, homeless guy with a voicebox shouting about dwarfs and roosters being accompanied by other drunk homeless guys banging on street signs.